If, over the next few days, you spot a nautical-looking fellow wearing a silk and beaver-pelt top hat that’s seen better days, you should probably offer to buy him a drink. Since late Victorian times, a beaver hat has crowned the captain of the first of the “salties,” or ocean-going ships, to dock in Toronto in the spring. In times past, the man who wore it was treated to a hero’s welcome around the port.

The St. Lawrence Seaway, with its numerous locks that allow seagoing vessels to navigate the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes from Montreal to Lake Superior, closes to shipping traffic every fall. This spring, it saw its formal reopening on March 22, and throughout this week communities along its length will hold their own top hat ceremonies to welcome their first ships.

Toronto has been offering a prize to the first ship for about 200 years, says harbour master Angus Armstrong. “To promote the port, we offered $100 and a briefcase; that was instated in about 1812. That would be a big amount of money, so they would really be breaking ice to get it,” he says.

The ceremony in its current form dates back to 1861, when the harbour was the hub of city life. “It was an extremely busy port,” Armstrong explains. “Before the advent of trains, it was the only way to get goods in and out.” Over the winter, shipping would come to a standstill, but “when the first ship came in, you were going to get all your goods: tobacco and liquor and lumber; it was the sign of spring, when commerce would begin for Toronto.”

In those early days, Armstrong says, “it was a huge deal. For a lot of people it was a race to get to Toronto; some would win only by a few hours. It show­ed good seamanship and it was considered to be a pretty high point of navigation, to be the first ship in.”

Although the honour is now not as hotly contested, a top hat ceremony is still held annually on the wheelhouse of the winning ship a few days after it docks. This year, the honour will go to Captain Yuriy Bodrov of the MV (for merchant vessel) Barnacle, carrying about 19,350 metric tonnes of sugar from Nicaragua to the Redpath Sugar Refinery. “It’s almost always Redpath that wins,” Armstrong says.

Toronto’s beaver hat was made by Christy’s & Co. Ltd. of London, England, and donated by Captain John Hooper Meade for the ceremony in 1861. “It’s very small,” Armstrong says. “It almost never fits any of our captains. It’s been repaired many times over the years, and we only bring it out once a year for the ceremony, and then it is put back into storage.”

Townsfolk used to welcome the victorious captain, who was allowed to wear the hat for 24 hours, with generous hospitality, but custom had to be changed after various captains and crews celebrated too enthusiastically.

“Certain bars were filling the hats with beer, and the crew would end up getting drunk, and the hat would be taken into custody by the police,” Armstrong says. At one point the hat went missing, “and we always worried that the captain would take it away.”

These days, Captain Meade’s hat is unlikely to disappear. In fact, “our biggest worry about the future of the hat is: Where are we going to repair a hat like that?” Armstrong says. “It’s a thing of great pride and history.”

The ship was expected in port on March 23; the ceremony most probably will occur on March 27.